Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul (15 page)

Well, the same night, Bob Templeton was driving down the 400 from a fishing trip on the French River. Bob was vice president of Telemedia Communications, which owned a string of radio stations in Ontario and Québec. While at the fishing camp, Bob had heard about the tornado. When he got to Barrie, he also got out of his car, stunned by the devastation. Up on the hill, he saw a house that looked as if a sickle had sliced right through it. The back was totally gone, and in the other half, a picture still hung on the wall. Just a few feet were between total disaster and nothing. Bob only lived about thirty kilometres away in Aurora. Waiting at home for him were his wife and three small children. They were his whole world.
My
gosh,
he thought,
that could have been my home.

On the radio, they were appealing for people to come out and help clean up the mess. The whole thing disturbed Bob enormously. He really wanted to do something to help, but felt that lugging bricks or writing a cheque was just not enough.
There has to be something we can
do for these people with our string of radio stations,
he thought.

The following night, he and another vice president with Telemedia came in and stood at the back of the room to evaluate a seminar I was doing to see if he wanted me to work with his company. During my presentation, Bob got an idea and after the seminar, the three of us went back to his office. He knew if you can visualize something, and really believe it and attach to it emotionally, wonderful things can happen. He was now excited and committed to the idea of doing something for the people of Barrie.

The next day he went to see the president and CEO of Telemedia, a marvellous man with a huge heart. When Bob told him his idea, he was given carte blanche with the company to make it happen. He put together a team, and the following Friday he hosted a meeting. He told them he wanted to use the awesome power they had right across Canada, and create something that could raise a serious amount of money.

Bob took a flip chart, and wrote three “3s” on the top. And then he said to all these executives, “How would you like to raise three million dollars in three hours, three days from now, and give it to the people in Barrie?”

Now they were acutely aware of the situation because their own radio station had been broadcasting it every few minutes. At first, they all said, “Templeton, you’re crazy, you couldn’t raise three million in three hours in three months from now, let alone in three days from now!” And Bob said, “Now wait a minute, I didn’t ask you if we could, or even if we should. I asked ‘Would you like to?’”

So he said, “Here’s how we’re going to do it.” Under the three 3s he drew a line, and then he put a line right down the centre of the flip chart. On the left side of this “t” he wrote, “Why We Can’t,” and on the other side he wrote, “How We Can.” Underneath ‘Why We Can’t,’ he put a big “X”. Then he said, “Every time an idea comes of why we can’t do it, we’re not going to spend any time on it. That’s of no value. We’re simply going to say, ‘Next!’ and we’re going to spend the next few hours concentrating on how we can do this. And we’re not going to leave the room until we have it figured out.”

At first he didn’t get much cooperation. And then somebody said, “We can have a radiothon right across Canada.” So he wrote that down, under “How We Can”, and then somebody else said, “We can’t do that—we don’t have radio stations right across Canada!”

Well, someone in the back of the room quietly said, “Next!” And Bob said, “No, a radiothon is a good idea— that will stand.” Once they started buying into the process, it was magical. The creativity that began flowing from these broadcasters was really something to see. At that time, they had the sports rights for the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Blue Jays, and the people from that wing of Telemedia said, “We can get you the celebrities and the hockey players!” Somebody else was in network broadcasting and had contacts all across the country. Once they were locked into it, it was amazing how fast and furiously the ideas kept coming. The project took off like a brush fire!

Then someone said, “We could get Harvey Kirk and Lloyd Robertson, the biggest names in Canadian broadcasting, to anchor the show.” Someone else replied, “We’ll never get these guys to anchor the show; they’re anchors on national television. They’re not going to work on radio!”

And then a few of them said all together, “Next!”

So they put the thing together. Radio stations rarely work together; they’re extremely competitive, and they’re very cutthroat in every market. But somehow they got fifty radio stations across Canada to participate, based on the idea that it didn’t matter who got the credit, as long as the people in Barrie got the money. The following Tuesday, they had a radiothon that went right across Canada. And yes, Harvey Kirk and Lloyd Robertson anchored it—on the radio. The dynamic duo had been apart for a number of years, but Bob and his team reunited them. When asked, they both responded “Absolutely, count on me.”

Many legendary Canadian performers were asked to participate, and each one said, “I’ll be there,” “Count on me.” If they were in town, they were there. One after the other they showed up at the station, and Lloyd and Harvey would talk with them about the tornado, and about their experiences living in the area. Some were on tour and phoned in from wherever they were. A lot of them were from the Toronto area, and of course, they were all shocked. It was kind of like, “This is something that happens in Kansas, not in our backyard!” It was very emotional.

The radiothon drew a huge audience. Lloyd and Harvey received nothing for their efforts; it was all out of the generosity of their hearts. But they raised the three million in three hours, three days after they began.

Back then, those homes were worth about 100 thousand dollars each. So Bob and his team like to think that instead of each of them writing a cheque to help out, they built thirty homes! Bob told me how very proud he is of being part of that effort. Obviously, he couldn’t have done it alone. But one idea by one person, with the right people buying into it, can have dramatic and magical effects and produce something of greatness!

Bob Proctor
Willowdale, Ontario
with Bob Templeton
Halifax, Nova Scotia

Rise Again!

. . .
T
here’s one of the finest voices to ever
express what Canada is. Stan Rogers. May we
never forget him.

Her Excellency, The Right Honourable
Adrienne Clarkson, Governor General of Canada

Although my husband, Stan Rogers, died suddenly and tragically back in 1983, his music lives on in the hearts of Canadians. When people who have never heard Stan’s music before hear it for the first time, they never forget it. It just somehow gets under their skin, and they recognize it instantly as something uniquely Canadian. They realize Stan is talking about them, and it makes him very special to them.

Although Stan was born and raised in Ontario, his family ties and his cultural roots were in the Canso area of Nova Scotia’s Chetabucto shore. He travelled all over Canada and the United States, and he loved the excitement of playing gigs with other musicians, meeting different people, listening to their stories and always creating a great deal of emotion with his music. Wherever he sang, he connected with the people. But he always loved to go back to Nova Scotia and to the sea.

Often, Stan and his band members would end a concert with a rousing rendition of “The Mary Ellen Carter.” This is a song about a group of fishermen, possibly Nova Scotian, who get caught in a violent October storm. Despite their desperate attempts to save the ship they love, which served them well, they are devastated when she goes down, due to the negligence of the captain. They hope she can be salvaged, but the owners are not interested. The men, therefore, vow to raise her themselves. Despite the difficulties they have to face, they are determined to make the
Mary Ellen Carter
rise again. In the last verse and final chorus of the song, the power of the human spirit to triumph over adversity is proclaimed with such great passion, everyone gets involved. With the crowd singing along, and Stan belting it out with everything he had, it was always one of his most popular songs.

One dark and stormy night, that song literally became a lifesaver. After a concert one evening, a man who had gone down with his ship—but who was ultimately saved— came up to Stan.

“Stan Rogers, I’m alive and here today because of you and your song, ‘The Mary Ellen Carter.’ I was on an old ship,” he continued, “and we were carrying a load of coal when we got caught in a very bad storm. We didn’t have very much warning. At about two o’clock in the morning, the ship was starting to get in trouble, then at about 4:15 in the morning, she cracked up and rolled over. I didn’t want to be sucked down by the vortex when the ship sank, so I started swimming away as fast as I could. After about an hour, I ran across a swamped lifeboat, and I managed to get in. It was very cold, and as the night wore on, and the sea kept smashing down on top of me, I finally got to feeling I just couldn’t take it any more. I was just about ready to give up, when all of a sudden, the words of your song came into my mind: ‘Rise again! Rise again! No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend, like the
Mary Ellen Carter
—rise again!’

“And I kept saying it over and over, and then the water would clear away, and then I’d shout it out, and then I’d sing it out, and then another wave would crash down on top of me. Stan, I firmly believe that if it weren’t for me remembering those words, I had just reached the point where I couldn’t have survived. There’s no question in my mind that your song was the reason I lived through that night.”

“. . . And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow,

Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart
and brain,

And like the
Mary Ellen Carter,
rise again!

Rise again! Rise again!—Though your heart it be broken

And life about to end.

No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend,

Like the
Mary Ellen Carter,
rise again!”

When we lost Stan, those of us who knew him and loved him faced our own dark night on the water. To think that such a vibrant spirit and voice could just be wiped out in seconds was almost too much to bear. But Stan’s spirit lives on in his music, and like that sailor who saved his own life by hanging on to the song inside himself, we were able to find strength in the memory of who Stan was and in his inspiring words of determination and hope. Stan’s own words helped us find the courage to go on— “And like the
Mary Ellen Carter,
rise again!”

Ariel Rogers
Dundas, Ontario

Gift of Wings

I
have a sense of euphoric well-being when I
fly, and I suspect that the same private ecstasy
rises in the hearts of all pilots. Humans are
shattered beings, but pilots heal themselves in
the sky. Flying is an impudent act, a metaphor
for freedom.

June Callwood

It happened on a perfect autumn day. It happened in a fraction of a second. Our love of hang gliding had brought about twenty-five of us to an eight hundred-foot ridge in upper New York state, one of my favourite sites. Just two years earlier, I had done my first high-soaring flight here, wheeling and dancing in the skies for almost three hours. The experience was overwhelming. Over the years I had pursued motorcycling, scuba diving under ice, barefoot waterskiing and skydiving. But after that first flight, I was totally captivated. Nothing could touch this. I knew I had found my sport.

September 12, 1981. As one of the instructors, I was first to launch and verify wind and thermal conditions. It had been gusty, but by two o’clock it looked settled enough. “Clear,” I yelled, eager to fly. But just as I pushed off, a gust of wind stalled my wing. Moments later I smashed through the low-lying bushes, and then . . . total, surrealistic quietness.

It wasn’t a violent crash, but at the moment of impact I felt a “twang”—as if some internal rubber band had snapped off its hooks. I had the sudden, sickening feeling that something overwhelming had happened. I ran a quick body check and then tried to flex my leg muscles. Nothing. When I reached down to touch them, there was no sensation. Then it hit me. I had broken my back. I was paralyzed.